Batruch Anatolia, Jetten Jolanda, Van de Werfhorst Herman, Darnon Céline, Butera Fabrizio
Université de Lausanne, Switzerland.
The University of Queensland, St Lucia, Australia.
Soc Psychol Personal Sci. 2023 Jun;14(5):621-635. doi: 10.1177/19485506221111017. Epub 2022 Aug 17.
Educational institutions are imbued with an institutional meritocratic discourse: only merit counts for academic success. In this article, we study whether this institutional belief has an impact beyond its primary function of encouraging students to study. We propose that belief in school meritocracy has broader societal impact by legitimizing the social class hierarchy it produces and encouraging the maintenance of inequalities. The results of four studies (one correlational study, = 198; one experiment, = 198; and two international data surveys, = 88,421 in 40+countries) indicate that belief in school meritocracy reduces the perceived unfairness of social class inequality in society, support for affirmative action policies at university and support for policies aimed at reducing income inequality. Together, these studies show that the belief that schools are meritocratic carries consequences beyond the school context as it is associated with attitudes that maintain social class and economic inequality.
只有功绩才是学术成功的关键。在本文中，我们研究这种制度性信念是否会产生超出其鼓励学生学习的主要功能的影响。我们认为，对学校精英主义的信念通过使其产生的社会阶层等级制度合法化并鼓励不平等的持续存在，从而具有更广泛的社会影响。四项研究（一项相关性研究，N = 198；一项实验，N = 198；以及两项国际数据调查，40多个国家的N = 88,421）的结果表明，对学校精英主义的信念降低了人们对社会阶层不平等的感知不公平性、对大学平权行动政策的支持以及对旨在减少收入不平等政策的支持。这些研究共同表明，认为学校是精英主义的信念所带来的影响超出了学校范围，因为它与维持社会阶层和经济不平等的态度相关联。
